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A Human Rights Defeat?

Updated April 25, 2000 12:01 a.m. ET

The United Nations Human Rights Commission met in Geneva to vote on a resolution condemning the People's Republic of China for denying its people the rights of free expression, assembly and religion. As before, the Chinese rallied support from developing nations to pre-emptively defeat the measure with a "no action" motion.

This annual rigmarole seems at first like a waste of time. Certainly for the United States, which usually sponsors the resolution and lobbied hard this year, it's a thankless task. Even if the...